


Such Sweet Sorrow

by Snorlax_on_USS_Discovery



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Crying, Episode: s02e13-14 Such Sweet Sorrow Parts 1-2, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 18:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30110058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snorlax_on_USS_Discovery/pseuds/Snorlax_on_USS_Discovery
Summary: An canon divergent  tale of Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2.What if Paul did not survive? What would the fallout be?
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Such Sweet Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> There is much angst ahead. Canon divergent character death. I’m sorry in advance.

Paul knew he was not going to make it to sickbay. With every beat of his heart, more and more blood left his body. The world around him began to turn to a hazy white, and sound slowly faded from his ears. The last words he heard were Tilly telling him it would be alright, and they were almost at sickbay.

His last thoughts before everything faded for one last time were that it was almost ironic that he would die of a literal broken heart. Technically a punctured heart, but the idea was the same. Paul’s heart had been broken metaphorically for most of the last six months, and now it was in tatters within his chest. At least he would no longer have to deal with the pain of losing Hugh, and as for Hugh, he could go on and live a happy life wherever and with whomever he wanted to choose.

Those were the last thoughts of Paul Stamets before he passed on from this world.

“No...no, Commander,” Tilly cried as she felt Paul’s body go limp as she and Nilsson tried to hold him up.

Luckily they were just short of sickbay, and Tilly could see Dr. Pollard not too far away. “Dr. Pollard!” She cried out in desperation, hoping and praying that Stamets had just passed out and not anything worse.

Tracy heard the desperation in Tilly’s voice and rushed toward her with a med scanner in hand.

“Is he going to be okay?” Nilsson asked as she struggled to hold the lieutenant commander up now that he was not assisting them anymore.

“Let’s get him to a biobed.” Tracy tried not to let her emotions show. The scanner was not showing any detectable life signs and hoped the biobed could give a better picture of if Paul could be saved. She did not want to admit it did not look good.

The biobed readings were just about what Tracy expected; excessive blood loss that could not sustain life, skull fractures, shoulder, and elbow fractures, but she was not expecting the amount of damage to Paul’s heart. The only way he could have been saved if he had been beamed to sickbay almost immediately after the shard pierced his heart.

“I’m sorry. There is nothing that can be done.” Tracy put her best doctor face on despite the urge to cry. She quickly glanced to where Hugh was working on a patient at the far end of the room, too engrossed with patient care to notice what was going on. She had no idea how she was going to tell him about Paul. There were too many patients to care for, and she had deeply buried the personal feelings about the couple that would not get their second chance.

Tracy covered Paul’s body with a sheet, grabbed someone, and asked them to move the body to where they kept those who had died so far. The count was at three so far, and it was undoubtedly only to rise as the battle raged on.

It was impersonal to move Paul so quickly, but they needed the bed as the injured kept coming in. Tracy could see the two women were in shock, and she did know what to say to them.

“Nilsson, I can use some help here. Do you think you can help?” Tracy asked of the less shocked woman.

The lieutenant nodded. “Sure. Whatever you need me to do.”

Tilly looked like she was about to burst into tears. She had just lost her friend and mentor, and she had no idea how to process that. “I...I umm. I’m going to the bridge...see if they...need help.” She slowly backed her way out of sickbay and turned around just as she was about to collide with someone.

“Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry,” Tilly’s eyes grew double in size as she saw who she had almost knocked over. “Dr. Culber...I thought...” She could not finish the thought. He was supposed to be on the Enterprise, not here on Discovery. “I’m needed on the bridge.” She could be the one to tell him that Paul had just died as she was not ready to believe it yet.

Hugh watched as the redhead made a very hasty exit. It was strange even by Tilly standards, but there were too many patients to take care of to allow it to be more than a passing thought.

________________________________

Everything had finally begun to quiet down in sickbay. The Discovery crew had landed somewhere in the future, and the ship was still in danger, but all the patients were stable. Hugh thought he could use this bit of downtime to visit Paul and let him know he chose to stay and see if they could try to have a second chance, though he didn’t stop to think that engineering might not be having any downtime considering all the problems with the ship’s systems.

Hugh sought out his dear friend Tracy to see if she minded if he’d step out for a few minutes, but it seemed she was looking for him too.

“Trace...”

“Hugh...”

“You go first.”

Tracy had no idea how to break this news to Hugh. He was finally starting to feel like himself again, and he took a big gamble coming back to take a chance on fixing things with Paul. How was she to tell him that he’d never get that chance? How much was this news going to break him?

“Let’s go to someplace a little quieter,” she said not able to meet her friend’s eyes as she put a comforting hand on Hugh’s arm.

“Trace, what’s going on?” Hugh asked, concerned as he was unable to read Tracy’s expression. He guided her to the small room where they kept the six casualties all covered with sheets. This was as quiet as it was going to get.

Tracy never liked this part of being a doctor. Telling people their loved ones were gone was a dreadful, soul-crushing task, and now to have to break that news to a friend especially considering their situation. It was also a bit ironic that Hugh bought them to this room to talk. Maybe it would be easier to show than to try to find the right words.

“Hugh, I’m so sorry,” Tracy said softly as she moved to the bed where she knew Paul laid and pulled down the sheet enough to reveal his face.

Hugh shook his head. “No,” he swallowed hard as a lump took hold in the back of his throat. “This isn’t real. This can’t be happening. How?” He refused to believe what he was seeing until his thumb gently caressed Paul’s temple, and there was no reaction.

“They were transporting the suit to the shuttle bay, and something exploded in the turbo lifts, and Paul took the brunt of it. By the time Nilsson and Tilly got him here, he had already lost too much blood, and there was too much damage to the heart.” Tracy knew Hugh would be mad that she didn’t tell him when Paul first came in.

“That was HOURS ago!” Hugh snapped and watched Tracy flinch at his raised voice. He remembered Tilly almost running into him, looking upset and shocked to see him before running off. “Why are you only telling me now?”

Tracy knew she deserved the anger directed at her. No matter what issues there had between Hugh and Paul, she knew they would always be the love of each other’s lives. “Everything had been so chaotic. There wasn’t a right time.”

“Not the RIGHT TIME?” Hugh was back to yelling. “This is Paul we are talking about. I can’t believe you’d keep this from me. I could have had the chance to save him.”

Tracy knew this was the grief talking, and it broke her heart to watch him absentmindedly stroke Paul’s temple with his thumb like he’d done countless times over the decade they were together. “There was nothing to be done. Don’t you think I would have tried everything, but the shard did too much damage to his heart.”

“Just get out of my sight now. I don’t want to look at you right now.” Hugh said with bitterness in his voice that he had not used in a very long time.

Tracy left without a word, wanting to be there for her friend in his time of need but knew there was a gorge separating them now, and Hugh needed this time alone with Paul.

Hugh stared at Paul’s body, lying unmoving in the stretcher, only from his shoulders above visible. Dried blood still was caked to his paler than normal face. He looked peaceful as if he was still sleeping, and Hugh half expected Paul to wake up and complain about him watching him sleep while blushing furiously.

He had to do something about the blood-stained face. It did not seem right to allow the most beautiful man in the world to be left with his face in such a state. Hugh found a towel and wet it with some water and slowly went about cleaning off the blood, and that is when the tears started to fall and not stop for the foreseeable future.

“What have you gone and done to yourself?” Hugh said, his voice shaking and his eyes clouded with tears. Jett’s words echoed in his head. _It might not last forever._ Who knew those words would be so prophetic, but he never expected it to end this way.

Hugh did not want to imagine what was going through Paul’s mind in his last moments of life; was he in those thoughts. Did he die thinking that he no longer cared for him?

Waves of regret washed over Hugh. With their last conversation in engineering, when Paul pushed him away, he should have said something, let him know that his feelings never changed. They were just locked and buried so deep within him that he was not sure if they could ever be unlocked, and that’s why Hugh kept him pushing him away, and when those feelings were finally unlocked, it was Paul doing the pushing away. At the time, he was just taking Paul on this word, not looking deeper for the feeling beneath the words. Paul was just protecting his heart from being hurt more than it already had been between his death and unresolved grief, and then to have it only further compounded by Hugh pushing him away.

Once Paul’s face had been cleaned of all the dried blood, Hugh tossed the towel to the floor and dropped a kiss to Paul’s forehead. “I’m so sorry, my love. I hope somewhere deep down you knew I still loved…no, still love you. That is something that never will change. I just could not make sense of why I could not connect with anything when I came back when after all these years, loving you had always been as easy as breathing. My head told me what I should be feeling, but I could not connect with it anymore, and that scared me.” Hugh took a deep breath and paused as he reached under the sheet to take hold of Paul’s hand into his. He laced their fingers together and carefully studied them. It was a perfect fit like always.

Hugh carefully bought the limp hand to his lips and tenderly kissed each knuckle. He tightly held the hand of his lost love to his mouth, not sure how to go on. Is this what Paul felt when he died?

“I should have let you help me through what I was going through. Maybe part of me was jealous that the nightmare you had been living for months was over and the one I had been living was still going on. I know if I had tried to explain that I needed space sometimes instead of pushing you away entirely that you would have understood…eventually. There were some nights that I woke up scared shitless, and my body instinctively reached out for you for comfort and cuddles. I had myself convinced that I was no longer the person you had fallen in love with, but I should not have ignored ten years together. I thought that I couldn’t give you want you needed. I should have given you more credit. All you needed and wanted was me. The rest we could have figured out as we went along.”

Hugh dropped his head to Paul’s shoulder and let out an indescribable wail of grief. He could no longer smell the scent that was uniquely Paul Stamets. A scent that bought happiness and calmness. A sense of completeness.

“I don’t know if letting you know how I felt when I came back would have changed what happened to you, but at least you would have known you were the best thing that ever happened to me and how much I love you, Paul.” Hugh refused to leave Paul’s side. He wanted to make sure wherever Paul was that he was not alone and would never be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always welcome. Please drop a line to let me know what you think. 
> 
> Thanks to SpaceBoos discord for the writing sprints today that pushed me to finish this. 
> 
> This is the counter piece to Living a Life Within, but with more angst.


End file.
